For over twenty years now I have been teaching parents how to connect, validate and understand the needs behind children’s emotional expressions, and allow them to feel and express themselves fully. Yet I noticed new difficult behaviors and dependencies arising as a result of these well intended endeavors. Indeed, some of the kindest parents unintentionally teach their children to feel more entitled and therefore less peaceful.

Many of us grew up emotionally lonely and confused by habitual denial of our feelings. We were told, “Don’t cry, nothing happened,” while inside we felt that a lot happened; or we were shut down with, “You are fine,” when we were hurting inside. It is inspiring to see many of today’s parents trying to give their children the compassion and validation they themselves did not receive. However, in their anxiety to be gentle, parents sometimes don’t realize that they teach victimhood and neediness. They typically call for my guidance saying: “I have been so kind and responsive, why is my child so demanding, whiny, angry and even aggressive?”

How validation and talk about feelings and needs can backfire:

Depending on how we speak, the child can turn validation into seeing herself as a victim; “If my feeling is so right and my need so real, then it is horrible that I am not getting what I want.” The relief of knowing, “Mommy understands how miserable I am,” can turn into, “I am right to be miserable so I must get what I want.” The child then feels entitled and angry and is likely to hit and scream.

Dwelling on emotions can recreate them and make the child a believer in her own drama. When we “drown” in the story, we lead the child to devote more tantrums to defend similar scenarios again and again. The question is how to validate the child’s emotional experience without drowning with her. We want to encourage her to express herself freely with our attentive and caring listening; we don’t want to pump emotions that weren’t authentically hers. While connecting kindly, we must simultaneously open the door for her to feel resilient and able to move on with inner peace.

The source of pain is not what happens, but what the child says to herself about what happens, which she learns from us. Therefore, it is about doing our own work side by side with the child, learning to discover how our mind takes us for a ride and not pass this painful ride to the child. We don’t want to deny emotions, nor do we need to be unkind or controlling, but we do want to empower the child to discover joy and even gratitude in what is unchangeable.

In case you didn’t know already, Taking Our Places is not exactly about parenting, it’s about the kind of parenting that I aspire to. In traditional parenting, we are told that parents are in control and that children must learn to behave in a proper way through our consistent use of discipline. We use time outs, consequences and rewards to ensure that our children “listen” and comply. And it often works, but not without a cost. Parenting that way can be a chore, a joyless power struggle. And our children may “behave,” but out of fear or calculation. (If I don’t clean up, I won’t be able to watch TV. If I do my homework, I’ll get a treat.) What they don’t learn is to make their own decisions based on their needs AND the needs of others. They don’t learn empathy and problem-solving skills. Most importantly, as our children grow, their power grows too. By the time they are teenagers, they’ll lie, conceal what they are doing from us, and fight us.

People often believe that the opposite of authoritarian parenting is permissive: if you’re not in charge, then your children must be. To surrender control must mean spoiling our children, surrendering to chaos, and threatening the well-being and future of our children. And yet, these are not our only two choices — to control our children or let them control us. Instead, we can choose to partner up, to share power. This alternative focuses on building trust and connection with our children. Instead of rewards and consequences, we try to develop a relationship of mutual respect and mutual caring for each other’s needs. It’s taking the long view of parenting. When we force our children to behave the way we want, we also give them only two choices: to submit or to rebel. If we don’t force them, they might not always make the choices we would want them to make, but they will probably not need to rebel either. The hope is also that our children will learn to do things for the “right” reason. The question is not, “Can I get my kid to go to bed at 8 pm tonight?” but “Can I support my child over the long term to CHOOSE for herself to act in ways that protect her health?” The hope in this example is that they will grow to be in touch with their OWN real needs for rest, and go to bed not because somebody told them they have to, but because they’re tired. This kind of parenting has many names: partnership, democratic, mindful, conscious, compassionate, attachment-based, Non-Violent Communication, etc. It’s a deep paradigm shift that has the power to transform our lives, the lives of our children, our culture, and ultimately our world.

Perhaps you know Tolstoy’s saying “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” A friend of mine once pointed out that it’s really the opposite: unhappiness is what’s boring and monotonous. Suffering is suffering, no matter how you package it. But happiness, ha! Happiness can be quiet togetherness, raucous laughing, deep sharing of purpose… Happiness is never boring, never the same.

My husband quoted our friend’s take on Tolstoy while writing about the picture you see on this post. And I remember being struck by seeing these words juxtaposed with our picture. I was almost surprised, taken aback. “It’s true, we are a happy family,” I internally confirmed, a little unsure of myself. It felt strange to say these words. Even to myself. I didn’t grow up in a happy family, so there was also a sense of accomplishment: “Yes, I did it! I have a happy family!!” Do you know that feeling? The “looking around at your life and thinking, wow I came a long way” feeling?

Happiness is not the same as perfection or the lack of suffering. We’re plenty imperfect, and we have our share of frustrated, angry, worried, sad, tense, and straight up unhappy moments. But there’s also no doubt we’re happy. We have deep loving care, trust, joy, connection, gratitude. Here’s one image that comes to mind when I think about happiness: my daughters Maayan and Sasha hugging and dancing and chanting “I love you.” Would you share one happy family moment?

Two personal stories come to mind when I read this post. Well, quite a few stories, but I’ll share two with you.

The first story: I introduced a friend of mine, Jennifer, to Unconditional Parenting about a year ago. She now looks at the world through a different lens and is loving it.

A few months ago she was driving her car, with a friend in the front seat and her two children in the back. Her young child, Lucinda, was uncomfortable and started to cry. Jennifer pulled the car over, her friend looking at her a bit puzzled. She walked over to her daughter who looked up, and like her friend, with a look of confusion.

Jennifer tried to figure out what was going on for her child and guessed that she was hot and uncomfortable in her jacket and asked, “Would you like me to take your jacket off?” Her daughter looked up, eyes wide, so grateful, and said, “Yes, Mommy!” Jennifer told me, “In the past, I would have told her to hang on, we’ll be home soon.” She continued, “Why would I do that? I would take off my jacket. If my friend were hot, I’d make sure she could could take off her jacket. The only person that I the world that, in the past, I wouldn’t stop to make comfortable, would have been my own child. How crazy it that?

The second story: I was with a friend, and he was explaining something to me about being kind to ourselves. I had a cut on my finger. He said, “Be kind to it. Be compassionate.” I thought, “What is he talking about? How can I be compassionate to it?” As though he were reading my mind, he said, “Pretend the cut were on your child. What would you do?”

It hit me like a wave… I talk about liking myself and loving myself, but never in my life have I been as compassionate and soft and as gentle as I imagined in that that moment, transferring the love I give my children when they’re hurt to myself. I started to cry because I couldn’t even imagine being that loving to myself. I wondered whether we start out in life being that caring to ourselves and whether somewhere along the way we’re taught out of it. I cried because it all seemed so simple and so incredibly hard at the same time.

So, how do we learn to love unconditionally when we weren’t loved that way ourselves? In fact, we’re often taught that doing so will spoil our children and turn them into little entitled beings. And how do we learn to love our children unconditionally not only at the obvious times when they’re hurt, but at all times, like when they’re behaving “ugly” and when they need our love and for us to be present the most.

This post is so raw and so real, and as I read it, I felt fragile and grateful for what Teresa wrote and for the journey we are all on.

I Never Learned How to Love Children

In her book, All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks wrote this paragraph that has stayed with me for some time. I’ve written about it before, but for some reason I was drawn back to want to write about it again.

The first time I wrote something, I merely touched the surface of my feelings and the way it challenged me. This time, I finally got to the core of some truth, even if it took me a while to get there.

She writes:

“An overwhelming majority of us come from dysfunctional families in which we were taught we were not okay, where we were shamed, verbally and/or physically abused, and emotionally neglected even as we were also taught to believe that we were loved. For most folks it is just too threatening to embrace a definition of love that would no longer enable us to see love as present in our families. Too many of us cling to a notion of love that either makes abuse acceptable or at least makes it seem that whatever happened was not that bad.” – bell hooks

I’ve read this portion of the book many, many times.

And I struggle even now with it.

Even as I wrote this, I kept typing and deleting as I desperately tried to find the words to express my thoughts and feelings, thoughts and feelings that need to come to the surface.

I took a break from trying to write and washed some dishes. I cooked a bit and noticed the ways I was feeling annoyed and short-tempered with my family. It was still sitting with me.

But then the truth hit me in a flash. It brings tears to my eyes as I write it.

The truth is I know very little about loving children.

And here’s why…

I never learned how to love children without control.

I never learned how to love children without conditions.

I never learned how to love children and not make them responsible for my happiness.

I never learned how to love children without expecting them to “do better next time.”

I never learned how to love children for just being who they are, not for what they do.

I never learned how to love children without wanting to change something about them.

For most of us, when we have our second child, we are grateful that we are giving our first child a sibling — a confidant; someone he or she will be able to travel through life with, even when we are gone; a best friend for life. We imagine total bliss, holding hands, and our children thanking us for the gift we’ve given them.

Once we realize that they will not always be grateful for the gift we believe that we’ve given them, what do we do? How do we become comfortable with the relationship they have and how do we help them navigate the sometimes turbulent waters of siblinghood?

When Siblings Fight

My two children play together beautifully much of the time but they also fight frequently, especially when we’re at home. Sometimes the constant bickering drives me nuts. I go back and forth between letting them work it out themselves and intervening. They yell at each other a lot and sometimes hurt each other intentionally. How can I help them learn better ways of resolving their differences?

Signed, Frustrated mother of two

Dear Frustrated Mother of Two,

Before you approach helping your children, I would suggest that you ask yourself what about their fighting is “driving you nuts.” Are you physically uncomfortable with the level of noise? Do you need more peace and quiet? Do you feel frustrated because you want some peace of mind as you go about your life in the house? Maybe you’re concerned for your children’s safety, or feel discouraged about the possibility that they will grow to live together more peacefully? Are you also confused about how to help them in these situations? There may be other feelings and needs to explore. The more you give yourself room for connecting with yourself, the clearer you will get about what strategies are likely to meet your needs. You may notice that, depending on what your needs are, your strategies may vary considerably.

Gaining inner clarity about your feelings and needs is likely to open your heart when you actually approach your children to talk about this situation. It will also enhance your ability to express yourself to them without blame or anger, dramatically increasing the likelihood that they could hear you and dialogue with you about both their needs and yours.

As I read the letter, I couldn’t helping thinking about the pain each family member must be feeling. I immediately sent off an email to a friend who is a therapist who practices nonviolent communication (NVC) and wrote, “This family is in need of an NVC intervention!”

I was trying to guess at what Nick Crews was feeling. Perhaps he was frustrated, fearful, or even sad because he values self reliance and independence and his children are not yet there? My guess is that his children wish things were different as well. Perhaps they value support and wish they could depend on their dad more? In any case, this family has needs that are not being met, and their strategies are not working for each other…. maybe not even for themselves.

People have applauded Crews’ message for “telling it like it is,” while others claim in was mean and destructive.

Bonnie Harris, author of “When Kids Push Your Buttons,” wrote a response to Nick Crews as well. Here it is.

What You Focus On Grows

There is no question that there is not parent alive who hasn’t been annoyed, angered, and disappointed in their children at one time or another. We all know the feeling of failure when our hopes for future brilliance are dashed in a nano second when a child does exactly what he was told not to do. Suddenly we castastrophize to jail-time and a life of no friends, no employment, no responsible behavior.

Our own parenting failures provoke over-controlling reactions in our attempts to finally get it right—so they will get it right. We yell, threaten, punish, and bribe believing that our negative reactions will motivate our children to do what we want. Unless our children live in fear of what we are going to do or say, they have their own agendas fueled by what is in their best interest—getting what they want—like all of us.

This week, New York Times columnist, David Brooks commented on the now viral letter of “bitter disappointment” written by Nick Crews to his adult children—known in Britain as the Crews Missile. Whether Crews is simply blowing off years of pent up steam with no care about how his message lands or whether he truly believes his words will inspire his children to change, his letter berating their failures has shocked many and emboldened others who support his indignation.

When kids are acting in ways that make them hard to love, that’s when they need our love the most, and that’s really really hard. Their “unlovable” behavior triggers us, and often we want to push them away when what they really need is for us to draw them in toward us, and be their safe place. But, we’re only human, right? We might be parents or teachers or caregivers, but we still have feelings, right? If you prick us, do we not bleed? So, how, when our kids are behaving in unlovable ways, do we remain calm and compassionate and regulated, so we can be there for our children?

Larry Cohen, author of Playful Parenting, has some suggestions to help us cultivate empathy in these emotionally difficult moments.

Understanding and Empathy

If we look under the surface of our children’s behavior, at how they might be feeling, we are often in a better position to get things back on track. How have you nurtured that talent of looking deep inside, understanding where a child’s behavior is coming from and seeing the pain behind the problems?

When our children have been “bad,” it’s hard for us to remember that they need comfort rather than punishment. After all, when you have made a mistake, would you rather get understanding or criticism?

The best way to cultivate empathy is to focus on children’s underlying needs and feelings, instead of reacting to the behavior. If we tune in to what they need – including the need to be understood – then children will be more cooperative and happier.

But empathy – identifying and understanding another person’s feelings and difficulties – can be hard. Most of us didn’t get enough empathy when we were little. Now that we aren’t little anymore, we usually don’t want to think about when we were, and we certainly don’t want to feel those old scary or painful feelings again.

Sometimes we avoid empathy simply because we can’t handle the heartbreak of empathizing with our own child’s pain. So, instead, we yell at, scold, punish and ignore our kids, focusing on what they are doing instead of what they are experiencing underneath.

The other day I was speaking my friend, Lisa, who is trying to get out of the habit of “Good Jobbing” her kids. Our children were playing together, and her child did something, and out of Lisa’s mouth, came the words, “Good Job!” Lisa laughed, and said, “There I go again.”

I agreed with her that it’s a hard habit to break. I can remember when I started my “no good-jobbing” journey, and I’d start “G…” and then stop mid-sound with nothing left to say. I was amused with myself that I believed that I needed to be the evaluation announcer of my child’s play and behavior. What helped me eventually as I weaned myself off “good jobbing” my kids, was just to be comfortable with the silence and not say anything. Eventually, I learned sometimes to be silent and sometimes, when I felt like it, to use other words in place of “good job.” Sometimes though, I still find it hard, especially when, for example, my kids come to me and ask, “Mommy, what do you think of my drawing? Do you like it?”

Here are some suggestions from Inbal Kashtan when you don’t want to remain silent, yet you want to say something other than “good job” (or some other form of evaluation).

The Sweetest Game in Town

Contributing Without Praiseby Inbal Kashtan

Photo courtesy of stevendepolo

Question to Inbal: I have always tried to encourage my children in their development through praise of certain behaviors, though I don’t believe in praise or criticism of the person. For instance: “I notice you are doing a great job being patient, or generous, etc.” Or: “Thank you for being so cooperative and respectful during violin practice. Great work!” What’s your perspective on praise?

Inbal’s Answer: In every workshop I do, I end the day with at least a short segment on gratitude and appreciation. I do this in part because I believe that contributing to one another is one of the sweetest experiences in life, and I want to share with people how they might express their appreciation for such contributions—to themselves and others. I also make sure to explore this topic because I believe it’s important to reduce our dependence on praise and rewards.

One reason I try not to praise is because I see it as the exact mirror image of criticism. When I praise someone, I imply that I have the authority and power to judge their behavior. If I believe in moving away from judging something as bad, I want simultaneously to move away from judging something as good.

Here’s a brief example. One afternoon, my family and some friends were throwing Frisbees outside. When my son, who was 3 at the time, threw the Frisbee, it flew in a long arc and landed across the courtyard. The adult friend who was with us said: “You’re a great Frisbee thrower!” My son picked up the Frisbee, threw it again, and it flopped just a couple of feet from him. He said: “I’m a bad Frisbee thrower.” It seemed to me at that moment that he got very clearly the message that the flip side of “good” thrower was “bad” thrower.

I’ve been studying Nonviolent Communication (NVC) for about five years and hope to continue doing so for the rest of my life.

I was first introduced to it when one of the administrators at my children’s Montessori school recommended that I read the book, Life Enriching Education, by Marshall Rosenberg, founder of Nonviolent Communication. It was life changing. It put into words what I was feeling as I looked through the world with “new eyes” as only a new parent can.

I came to understand violence in a new way, not just as as fists and war, but as the violence we see and partake in everyday — the violence against ourselves with unkind words, expectations, and judgments, and with the same violence against each other.

NVC helps me connect with myself, which in turn, helps me connect with others. As a parent, this is huge, because I now see every moment as an opportunity to connect with my children, and I truly believe this is key because everything happens within relationship. We cannot control our children, although at times we wish or would like to think that we can. In the end though, we can only influence — and that happens within relationship. This is true for all people who interact with kids (and with everyone else too). It changed my life. Perhaps it will change yours too.

A Parent’s Way to the Heart

I vividly remember the first time I got really mad at my son. He was about two years old, and I had just asked him not to turn on the computer. At that moment, keeping the computer off seemed very important to me. My son gazed at me with an unfamiliar look in his eyes. I imagined he was thinking to himself that he really wanted to stop, as I had asked, yet he seemed compelled to move forward anyway. While still looking at me, his little body catapulted itself toward the computer, his fingers reaching out to turn it on. To my utter astonishment, my body, too, lunged forward, my arms circled my son’s body as I pulled him away from the now buzzing computer, and I heard myself yelling, “NO!”

I was grateful to regain my equilibrium in just a moment as I noticed that this was not how I wanted to hold my child or speak to him. Immediately I expressed my sadness at having grabbed him and my desire to touch him only gently. What began as a “power struggle” and had threatened to turn into a full-fledged, mutual “tantrum,” turned instead into a moment of sweet connection as we snuggled on the floor, talking about what led him to turn on the computer, and what led me to try to hold him back.

I have certainly gotten angry in the couple of years since that incident, but I am grateful to know a process I can almost always rely on either to prevent me from venting my anger at my child or to help us reconnect if we have acted in ways that we didn’t like. This process, Nonviolent Communication, focuses on understanding and meeting people’s core human needs.

I can still remember the safety I felt when I would crawl into bed with my parents. I’m not sure that there was a safer place in the world.

When I was little, the monsters at night were in my closet and my drawers. I checked them a lot. Yet, now that I’m a parent, when it’s bedtime for my kids, and when I’m tired and I have my own agenda, I sometimes forget about those monsters or those shadows, noises, and thoughts that became larger than life when my parents turned out the lights. I’m guessing that I’m not the only parent in the world who used to have these fears.

So, where do these nighttime fears come from?

A Story of Evolutionary Mismatch

The monsters under the bed are realby Peter Gray

Infants and young children in our culture regularly protest going to bed. They make all sorts of excuses. They say they are not tired, when in fact they obviously are tired. They say they are hungry, or thirsty, or need to hear a story (and then one more story)–anything to stall. They talk about being afraid of the dark, or afraid of monsters in the closet or under the bad. Little babies without language, who can’t yet describe their fears or try to negotiate, just scream.

Why all this protest? Many years ago, the famous behavioral psychologist John B. Watson argued, essentially, that such behavior is pathological and derives from parents’ overindulgence and spoiling of children.[1] Remnants of that view still persist in books on baby care, where the typical advice is that parents must be firm about bedtime and not give in. This, the experts say, is a battle of wills, and you, as parent, must win it to avoid spoiling your child.

But clearly something is missing in this explanation from the experts. Why do infants and young children choose to challenge their parents’ will on this particular issue? They don’t protest against toys, or sunlight, or hugs (well, usually not). Why do they protest going to bed, when sleep is clearly good for them and they need it?